Resolving the difference between evolutionary antecedents of political attitudes and sources of human variation

4 November 2014

Dr Adam Lockyer

Senior Lecturer in Security Studies, Macquarie University

Distinguished Professor Peter Hatemi

Distinguished Professor of Political Science, Microbiology and Biochemistry, Pennsylvania State University

by Adam Lockyer and Peter K. Hatemi

Humans, despite the country they inhabit, the social structures they constitute, and the forms of governments they live under, universally possess political attitudes; that is, those attitudes towards sexual norms, out-groups, resource allocation, cooperation and fairness. It has been proposed that this near universal manifestation across societies remains ingrained in the psychological architecture of humans because of human evolution. However, there is enormous variation in political attitudes within and across populations, and this variation is not merely a function of social differences but derives, in part, through neurobiological differences within human populations. Thus, there is great confusion on the difference between what has evolved as universal, and what is due to individual variation. This confusion, results, in part on the lack of integration of the theoretical mechanisms that addresses how humans vary within evolutionarily adaptive universals. Here we seek to fill this lacuna by explicating how evolutionary biology and psychology account for the universal need for humans to have political attitudes while neurobiological differences account for variation within those evolved structures.

Adam Lockyer is currently Senior Lecturer in Security Studies at Macquarie University. Previously, Lockyer was a Research Fellow in Defence Studies at the University of New South Wales and, between 2010 and 2013, a lecturer in US Politics and Foreign Policy at the US Studies Centre.

Distinguished Professor Peter Hatemi

Distinguished Professor of Political Science, Microbiology and Biochemistry, Pennsylvania State University

Pete K. Hatemi was a Postdoctoral Fellow at the US Studies Centre in 2011 and then a research associate until 2016. He is currently Distinguished Professor of Political Science, Co Fund in Microbiology and Biochemistry at Penn State.